I think this is a cracking move by McGhee. I rate both Paton and Maguire. But both need game time to develop their respective games. Like BB says, Maguire suffers from wanting to be the hero every time - he doesnae hae a clue what it means to play as part of a team and work towards a collective goal.
These loan deals will either toughen them up mentally and physically, or they'll realise that they've finally found their level. Unfortunately, we've lost a number of promising players by loaning them out. See Michie, Wyness and Ryan Strachan, for example. Both were tipped for BIG BIG things with Aberdeen. But they just couldn't get into the first team. So we loaned them out, and they lost the will to be Dons players after that. Wyness found his level with ICT in the first division; Michie just lost his confidence completely and now is pretty run-of-the-mill at Peterhead. Likewise, Strachan won the Rising Star SPL award just under 2 years ago. He was binned by Aberdeen and then by Celtic, and is now with Peterhead.
I hope that both Maguire and Paton can come back developed mentally and physically. But this move also frees up some space in our squad budget for one or two players who are already established SPL/Championship caliber.